Intellectual Brownian Motion

Daily Archives: December 29, 2011

I am pleased and proud to announce that my first of two books for Municipal World has been published. Politically Speaking is a guide to media relations for municipal politicians and municipal staff. Of course the advice and strategies I suggest are applicable to other levels of government as well. My goal was to provide some basic guidelines on how to deal with the media, but also to encourage municipalities to create proper communications policies.

There is a video interview about the book here:

My next book is similar, about social media and municipal use (politicians and staff). It was a bit more of a challenge to write because the whole field of social media is changing. Even as I was writing, headline stories forced me to change some of my content. The finished manuscript is in MW’s editorial hands, but I may need to make some updates before it gets much further. I hope it will be published in late winter.

Like this:

Bella’s wisdom

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy, that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. It is an exercise which always involves a certain number of internal contradictions and even a few absurdities. The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character-building value of privation for the poor.
John Kenneth Galbraith,
“Stop the Madness,” Interview with Rupert Cornwell, Toronto Globe and Mail (6 Jul 2002)

Archival:

Search Scripturient:

It drives Susan to distraction that I love B-flicks. She squirms and fidgets if I put one into the DVD player and can seldom sit through an entire movie. They get cut off mid-film, and saved for me some time in the vague future when I might have an evening [...]

This week, after watching the 2013 film, 47 Ronin, starring Keanu Reeves, I had to wonder why Hollywood felt it necessary to take a powerful story, a great historical drama, and mess with it. And, of course, why they would put Keanu Reeves into a film about 18th century Japanese [...]

I came across an interesting piece on bad thinking online recently. In it, the author argues some of the points I’ve mentioned in the past about people who believe in conspiracy theories, gossip and other online codswallop:

The problem with conspiracy theorists is not, as the US legal scholar Cass Sunstein [...]

A small handout for a local “psychic studio” that arrived in my mailbox offers “Superior PSYCHIC and Spiritual Cleanser.” I never know whether to laugh at the silliness of these people or cry over how they continue to bilk gullible, superstitious fools. We are still so Medieval in our thinking, [...]

I always learn something new, something valuable from every municipal election campaign. I learn from talking to people, I learn from community meetings. I learn from comments and emails I receive. I learn from other candidates, too – there are often good ideas proposed that can be developed by council later.